tell me how you really feel (about ENGL)

I've enjoyed the few I've played (E530 preamp, Thunder, Powerball, Special Edition) for the most part, especially the E530 and Thunder (dunno about now but in the past they were insane values in my opinion)


I do think the Special Edition is massively overrated
 
Man I’ve had 4 Engl amps.

FB60, PB, Savage 60 MKII and Smolski sig.

I still have the latter two. They sound killer. Not a day I turn them on where I’m not fully satisfied. I’ve known forever that the build quality is not aligned to the cost in the US but nothing else sounds like them either.

That said, I don’t gig them. Mainly because none of my giggin lg bands require those tones. I do KISS, Maiden and AC/DC tributes. If I wanted the Engl tones live though, I’d probably use my own captures or profiles like I do with the other bands lately. I tend to bring as small a rig as possible. We always get backline so I run into the Return of whatever amp is on stage.

Oh, I also have and love the 530 preamp. That I’ve gigged many times.
 
my favorite engl is the engl se el34, and i really liked the 6l6 version alot, i also owned the savage 120, steve moorse, and the blackmoore, they all sounded good, but i had the invader 100 and 150 and liked the 100w better but neither blew me away, and i owned multiple versions of powerballs which i loved in the beginning but grew to hate as i played the others i mentioned above which just sounded better to me. But i just had too many issues to continue supporting the company and i dumped them and bought a couple diezels which hasnt given me a problem and seem much better built, and i still have my mesa and bogner stuff which seem better built than engl.
 
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I had an Engl Blackmore head in the past and I just got an Engl Straight 100...
Let me tell you...they are night and day...even construction wise...the blackmore had tiny irons whereas the straight has HUGE trannies and sounds very diffrent from the "engl" sound...

A good friend had also a Fireball 60 which was a piece of crap construction wise(it was like a shitty computer inside) and very thinny in sound...

Dat straight head is the shit...get one if you can...they are cheap too...
 
Tone Monster said:
I had an SE EL34 several years ago. Bought it new and basically never even moved it. You better believe it fried itself. Nightmare. Ended up selling it broken “as is” for pennies on the dollar. Never again.
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About 14 years ago I had come across a "fried" ENGL SE EL34 on the Musician's Friend website.

They were selling it for around $1600, supposedly brand new, and I was able to talk them down to $1350.

I was only interested in the amp since the ENGL people out here said they could sell me the entire replacement board for $400 and their tech's said they would only charge me about $150 to put it in for me.

I had ended up getting a brand new SE for under $2000.

Unfortunately, after a few days of playing on the amp, I had realized that the SE wasn't the sound for me (too compressed sounding and I was worried there would be problems again due to all of the switching capabilities), so I had sold the amp to someone that appreciated the tone and the killer price.
 
I think I've had 2 Powerballs. It has been so long ago. They both sounded cool, but they squealed like pigs when I took them to practice. I'm glad I had a backup there.
 
Purchased the E651 last year, sounds great, so far so good.


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Purchased this new over 10+ years ago. Recently sold the E530. Still worked great. Keeping the E850/100.

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